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UNDERSTANDING ASSERTION TO UNDERSTAND SILENCING: FINDING AN ACCOUNT OF ASSERTION THAT EXPLAINS SILENCING ARISING FROM TESTIMONIAL INJUSTICE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2016

David C. Spewak Jr.
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Abstract

Rae Langton and Jennifer Hornsby provide accounts of how pornography silences women by appealing to J.L. Austin's account of speech-acts. Since their accounts focus only on instances of silencing where the hearer does not grasp the type of speech-act the speaker intends to perform, their accounts of silencing do not generalize to explain silencing that arises from what Miranda Fricker calls “testimonial injustice.” I argue that silencing arising from testimonial injustice can only be explained by what we shall call the dialectical account of assertion, according to which assertion is the undertaking of a commitment in reasoned discourse. In doing so, I show that accounts of assertion based on speakers' intentions, proposals to common ground, and constitutive norms do not provide the necessary framework to explain silencing within the context of testimonial injustice. Having shown the strength of the dialectical account in explaining silencing, I conclude that the dialectical account also provides a way to remedy some instances of silencing arising from testimonial injustice providing further evidence that the dialectical account is the correct account of assertion.

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Articles
Information
Episteme , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 423 - 440
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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